


Ranger in the Trees

by Ronney



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:00:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27085981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ronney/pseuds/Ronney
Summary: An exploratory exercise I did to gain a feel for a character of mine, after recently coming into a late fixation on Sylvanas' personal wife harem aka the Dark Rangers. I originally didn't intend for it to be anything more than a personal little project, but decided I'd post it since everything else has floundered since the last bit I did literal months ago. Dark Ranger Syndal is likely a placeholder, as I was more interested in exploring what makes Poxen who she is and how she processes her circumstances and the world in which she's met with them. I feel like I managed to iron out some tonal inconsistencies, but I'm not quite up to investing the time into this to make it a proper, well polished story piece. Something bigger (and more adult) is coming a bit later in the upcoming week. Words words words.
Kudos: 9





	Ranger in the Trees

She had been there for hours, lurking among the thick of branches and growth like a gargoyle deposited in the midst of cloying nature. She had been traveling, roaming aimlessly with a sole companion that she had now lost, or that had abandoned her, and both scenarios had shackled the Dark Ranger to her sequestered perch. She did not move, she did not shift or breathe, she simply occupied a dark corner of space and watched and thought, sanguine eyes infrequently drawn to the flutter of wings or the rustle and scurry of a treetop rodent as it passed her by oblivious to her cool, odorless presence. Nothing, however, drew her thoughts from the inwards depths in which they dwelled and wallowed, swallowed like soaking flotsam long claimed by a once-turbulent sea. Her thoughts were formless, arranged to patterns of emotion with flashes of image and place and person, feelings sometimes lacquered with events as she perceived her past through the curious veil of undeath. Mostly she felt sorrow, anguish, and despair. The endless cycling of these emotional kin would lead her to recall a time she had been comforted in these harrowing depths, the memory of a hand resting on her head and stroking through her hair without concern for jostling the mask that bound her affliction as a voice sweeter than any Eversong summer would encourage her.

“ _Come now, little Pox. Even the dead can’t lay sorrowing in their graves._ ” It was always the same words, the same pet name of a pet name, but Sylvanas had always managed to stir the agonizing stillness when it had settled over her. Now Sylvanas was gone with many of her sisters, having spat on all they had thought they were working for, and it fell on those that remained to hunt and end her, should the time come. The memory would inject a fresh agonizing into Poxen’s unbeating breast and she would stifle the urge to wail, to eject her sorrows on her cursed song and wither the surrounding forest. For how long the cycle had continued she was unsure, having disregarded the passage of time, the rotation of sun and moon overhead as she lurked among the branches unmoving on the fringe of territory between the Alliance and the Horde. The world beyond her sorrow was illusory, insubstantial, and now offered no respite, and the dead had nothing if not time, the whole of eternity sprawled before them.

  
She may have dwelled in those branches till the next great cataclysm shook the foundations of Azeroth itself had a familiar sound not pierced the echoes of her despairing, a small yet distinct sound that rose above the turmoil and punctured through it gently.  
At the foot of the tree Ishta was calling her with a series of soft mewls.

  
Poxen responded automatically, tumbling out of the branches with scarcely a rustle and landing featherlight on the dry Autumn grass of southern Lordaeron (or was it northern Arathi?) with even less noise, even her long ranger’s cloak failing to snap on the rushing wind as she rushed to the ground below.  
  
“Ishta? What’s wro-” She began, and promptly stopped as her senses expanded from beyond the laser focus on her sole remaining companion and immediately arrested the presence of another in the grove. They were still, warm with life, and judging by the sudden hitch in their breathing were shocked to have seen her emerge from the trees. All of Azeroth was hunting for Sylvanas and her Dark Rangers, and it was unlikely the Alliance and its members were much for distinguishing between those that left with Sylvanas and those that did not, especially within their borders.  
  
Before they could move Poxen whirled about, a sharp and fluid pivot during which she brought her bow level and nocked an arrow, the wicked point of its head level with the throat of her unexpected company, ready to loose and stifle and cries or alarms. This was perhaps understood by the human she was met with, as he raised his hands and only whimpered, trembling as he stared wide-eyed at the Dark Ranger.  
  
Whoever he was he was no experienced soldier. Tall for a human and dressed in a dirt stained shirt and coveralls, his face lightly lined and wrinkled below a receding hairline, with a slight bulbousness to his nose she had been told occurred when humans had a particularly strong habit for drink. Two fearful brown eyes were fixed on the featureless stare of her mask, the icon of torment obscuring the blank, steely set of her expression, transfixed by the red points that smoldered faintly behind it. Poxen guessed he was a farm hand, or something equally menial with shabby clothes picked for a stroll through the woods. He had no weapons, but he did have a pack laden with items she heard jostle with the raise of his hands, though she couldn’t tell what they were through the thick material. Perhaps she had heard a dense glass?  
  
“What have you brought me, Ishta?” She asked, addressing the human in Common with a slight exaggeration in her delivery, playing on the menace her and her sisters doubtless enjoyed among the Alliance. Her voice carried the eerie resonance of her ill-stitched soul, granted a quality of morbid terror as the days since she had spoken last left the muscles in her throat stiff causing her words to scratch like the claws of a wraith on a cold, unlit window.  
  
“P-p-please, miss elf, I was just out for a spot to have lunch and a drink. I wasn’t snoopin none, I swear.” He lacked the particular, grating cadence of a human from Stormwind and its sovereignties. That was good for both of them.  
  
“Lunch and a drink? How does an ordinary human catch an elven ranger unaware?” she asked in a measured, almost stilted tone meant to incite menace, but to her merely sounded bored and slightly confused. The human didn’t seem to notice, at least, likely more concerned with the arrowhead pointed at his neck.  
  
“I d-didn’t know you were here, miss elf. I was just enjoyin’ my day when I saw an odd lookin’ cat ahead between some trees. I never seen it ‘round the village before, and it looked kinda scraggly, so I tried to catch it to bring home and make sure it was alright. I didn’t know you were up them trees, I swear.” His voice grew more and more desperate as he spoke, the fearful pleading cracking and trembling his words. Under normal circumstances the claim was ludicrous, but with how deeply she had been consumed in her sorrowing Poxen wasn’t unsure she couldn’t have missed the crunch of approaching footsteps on the unfamiliar Alliance lands in which she had sequestered herself. There was a worrying uncertainty to the whole situation, and uncertainties were likely to get her captured, interrogated, and killed. The old wound in her brow seemed to twinge at the thought, as if reminding her of past folly that had snuffed the spark from her thin form.  
  
The tension escalated in the pursuant silence. It would be nothing to let her arrow fly, her dark magic unnecessary to snuff out a single human life, and it would be days before the corpse would be found, if it ever was. No magic would score the wound or the body, and the weather was still warm enough that decay would almost certainly disfigure it beyond identification. The only alarm would be that someone had been found slain at all, and this human would tell none of the Dark Ranger he had seen after chasing a strange little housecat. He would fade in an instant, snuffed out not only from among the living but from their concern and recollection save for the moment he was found, and she could freely move on without worry. He could see these thoughts even through the cover of her mask and the pitiless glare of her eyes, and mutually they were aware of this, as well as one another’s understanding of it. He swallowed thickly, his chest rising and falling only as fast as he dared allow. She was still as death, moving not even for the slightest adjustment, the quietest breath. Both were beheld in impassive curiosity by the undead housecat.  
  
“Forgive me.” She said, barren of any remorse.  
  
=====================================================================  
  
Disposing of the human had not been a pleasant task, and with all the wasted time it had taken Poxen couldn’t help feel as if she’d made a mistake simply for the inefficiency; she then recalled she had no tasks, no purpose, and save for the presence of Ishta, was entirely alone. The return to her circumstances frustrated her, but the frustration inevitably led to sorrow, and so in the clarity following her blunder the Dark Ranger relaxed her tightly curling palms and stooped down to scoop up the tiny form of her cat, cradling her against her chest like an elven babe. She drew a cool fingertip up Ishta’s equally cool, thickly matted chest and was met with a flurry of claws and teeth playfully attaching themselves as the feline attacked her in a ritual she had only realized her reliance on when her world had been reduced to herself and her unliving pet. She wondered if Syndal knew the significance the animal would have for her when she dropped it in her lap all those years ago in the Undercity, as Poxen had sat gripped with maudlin in the wake of the siege of their new home, tucked away in the pinnacle of a dilapidated tower amidst the ruins of Lordaeron.  
  
“ _No time to feel sorry for yourself when you’ve a child to look after_.” She had said with an impish grin, the tip of her thumb brushing the base of one of Poxen’s ears over the hood, the rest of her fingers trailing a parting caress up the lower half of her ear as Syndal had left her to get acquainted with her new pet. It was before she had even been Poxen and was simply called by her birth name. It was likely she had, the ranger reflected as she tapped her finger against Ishta’s nose, the feline’s glowing eyes flashing as her teeth carefully snapped at the prodding digit. She thought of Syndal, of the many caresses the other ranger had given her ears, ever fond of the embarrassment it privately inspired in her much taller partner.  
“No time to feel sorry for myself,” she repeated in a quiet whisper, the same ear betraying a slight twitch as if recalling the stroke that had followed.  
  
She had walked an hour from where she had left the human, and while she knew it wasn’t far enough, she had elected to wait for nightfall to advance further in case fortune turned against her - it already had to place him in her path in the first place, after all. The light washing over Ishta’s fur gradually changed in color as it stretched across her belly. Poxen watched the spectral embers of the feline’s eyes as they focused intensely on her fluttering, prodding fingers. She didn’t smile or laugh, but there was comfort enough in the cat’s antics and presence to keep her from pitching forward into the sorrowing of her memories.  
  
She had ducked under a curling ridge beneath a particularly large tree, the view ahead lined with enough trees to disorient all but the most trained eyes as she waited for the sun to fall from the sky and give way to the moon. In the approaching dark her thoughts returned to Syndal and to others, to the many faces now divided on opposing sides of a line the one they had all followed had abruptly cut between them. She could see herself, Syndal, and Loralen, another of their collective, huddled in Icecrown observing Vry’kul, Syndal’s head leaned over on her shoulder and their nearest hands loosely entwined, Loralen crouched on her opposite side with her head lain across Poxen’s thighs, the three of them watching the comings and goings of the giants’ settlement for presence of the Scourge. Nearly buried in snow they had felt none of the cold, and the dark magic binding them to their bodies made chill and frostbite of little concern to their ability, and they had watched in this loose entanglement to know if these denizens of Northrend could be trusted. Loralen was with Sylvanas now, but she had exiled herself before learning to which side Syndal had gone. The recollection stung her bitterly, and she gently palmed the whole of Ishta’s face, earning a more frenzied response from the cat that sufficiently distracted her.  
  
She had to decide where to move on to. The Eastern Kingdoms were the most familiar, and where she was most likely to be found by her own sisters or by the Alliance. Kalimdor was conversely far more densely populated by the Horde, and she doubted the Kaldorei matriarch was restful in her pursuit of vengeance. It also presented the difficulties of boarding a ship and completing its passage undetected. But, perhaps the sea would do her some good, in the long run. She watched Ishta gnaw at her hand raising little dark lines with her claws that shortly faded, but didn’t really see any of it as her thoughts mulled and churned the problem at hand. She continued to play with her cat. As long as she had Ishta, she could keep above water.  
As night settled more comfortably and wholly over the sky above Poxen rose to her feet, and placing Ishta on her shoulder began to make her way southwest.  
  
=====================================================================  
  
It was well after dark when Mayor Johnson, as much as a village of a hundred could be said to have a mayor, heard the desperate pounding on the front door of the town hall that doubled as his home. An older man with a stout frame and a head that hadn’t known hair since the Second War, he had been deep in the pages of a novel he had purchased from a group of traveling merchants when the pounding started. He groaned with idle irritation as he set the book aside on the small coffee table beside his chair and pushed up to his feet. It was rare that their home of Glennford was so pressingly distressed that such theatrics were necessary, and so he made a point of taking a sip of his evening coffee (Johnson had long sworn the stuff didn’t give him the slightest buzz, but he was addicted to the taste) while letting whoever was at the door pound away in a panic over some triviality. As he ponderously made his way down the stairs from the second floor and to the door he narrowed down his suspicions to Mr. McMillan convinced that his neighbors had sabotaged his fence again and by golly he’s out for blood if something isn’t done about it, and Rudy Smith with another idea to put Glennsford on the map and make the whole town rich.  
“I’m coming, I’m coming. You can stop before you wake Old Nan.” He barked irritably at the door before turning the handle, and opening it to see he had been half right. It was Rudy Smith, but he stank of cheap ale so strongly that Johnson couldn’t help turning his head with a recoil of his whole body, nearly shutting the door in the man’s face.  
  
“Misher Mayor, Misher Mayor!” Rudy slurred, his eyes wild, “There’sh a dark elf in the woods! One ‘a them dead ranger typesh! I shaw her, I shaw he-”  
  
Johnson interrupted Rudy with a large palm outstretched between them, nearly smothering the other man’s face.  
  
“You saw what? A dead, dark elf archer?” He asked with undisguised agitation. “You mean one of those Banshee Queen types?”  
  
“Yeshir! I shnuck up on her! She wash wearin a mask, an had a dead cat! She wash gonna kill me, Misher Mayor! Drew an arrow an everything!” Rudy proceeded to mime what Johnson could only assume was his attempt at imitating the drawing of a bow and arrow, one of his beady brown eyes squeezed tightly shut as his tongue stuck out a corner of his mouth.  
  
“Rudy, how much have you had to drink?” He asked with what little patience he could muster.  
  
“N-nothin! She made me! She turned into a ghosht, and flew into my body!” He tried to hold a hand level and glide it forward to imitate being flown into, Johnson assumed, but his hand wobbled and then the rest of him followed. “She made me drink all my ale sho no one’d believe me! The Shcourge, they’re gonna attack! We have to-” Johnson cut Rudy off clapping a hand over his foul, booze-stinking mouth, and managed not to grimace at the feeling of wet heat that greeted his palm.  
“Now you stop right there, Rudy. I don’t care much for you bangin on my door after dark, but I care even less for you shouting the Scourge are coming back with folks so rattled from another war just ending.” His voice was an authoritative growl, usually enough by itself to break up most arguments. But tonight Rudy wasn’t quite cowed by it, and he shook his head free.  
  
“Pleashe, Misher Mayor,” he urged in a lower voice she’s gonna bring more Shcourge, we gotta evacuate!”  
“The undead dark elf archer.”  
  
“Yesh!”  
  
“That drew a bow on you, and didn’t kill you.”  
  
“Yesh!”  
  
“Then turned into a ghost, despite not bein’ one, and flew into your body and made you drink yourself stupid.”  
  
“Ye-”  
  
“Instead of killin you so you couldn’t raise an alarm.” Johnson continued, shifting so he filled up a bit more of the doorway.  
  
“Y-yesh…”  
  
“Rudy, go to bed and sleep it off.” He said firmly, before stepping back and shutting the door in the other man’s face.


End file.
